Category Archives: data journalism

A reading list for studying online journalism

As a new semester nears, I thought I would anticipate the ‘What should I read?’ enquiries by sharing an aggregated reading list from the classes I teach at both Birmingham City University and City University London. Here are 10 key topics with varying numbers of books for each – I’d very much welcome other suggestions:

Working in networks: Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks; Richard Millington, The Proven Path (PDF)
Content strategy: John Battelle, The Search; Bill Tancer, Click; David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect
Platforms: Mark Luckie: The Digital Journalist’s Handbook
Live and mobile journalism: Mark Briggs, Journalism Next; Dan Gillmor, Mediactive
Multimedia: Janet Kolodzy, Convergence Journalism and Practicing Convergence Journalism; Atton & Hamilton, Alternative Journalism; Wilma de Jong, Creative Documentary
UGC, social media and community management: Axel Bruns, Gatewatching; Andrew Lih, Wikipedia Revolution; Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do?
Data journalism: Bradshaw and Rohumaa, The Online Journalism Handbook; Andrew Dilnot, The Tiger That Isn’t; Darrell Huff, How to Lie With Statistics; Dona Wong, The Wall Street Guide to Information Graphics; Nathan Yau, Visualize This; Paul Bradshaw, Scraping for Journalists
Law, ethics and online journalism: Friend and Singer, Online Journalism Ethics; Lawrence Lessig, Code; O’Hara and Shadbolt, Spy in the Coffee Machine; Curran, Fenton & Freedman, Misunderstanding the Internet
Experimentation: Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody (ch10: Failure for Free); Michalko, Thinkertoys chapter 9; Ian Bogost, Newsgames; Matt Mason, The Pirate’s Dilemma (ch5: Boundaries)
Enterprise: Ken Doctor, Newsonomics; Simon Waldman, Creative Disruption; David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous

You might also find previous posts useful:

Data journalism training – places available

How to teach a journalist programming

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Cross-posted from Data Driven Journalism.

Earlier this year I set out to tackle a problem that was bothering me: journalists who had started to learn programming were giving up.

They were hitting a wall. In trying to learn the more advanced programming techniques – particularly those involved in scraping – they seemed to fall into one of two camps:

People who learned programming, but were taking far too long to apply it, and so losing momentum – the generalists
People who learned how to write one scraper, but could not extend it to others, and so becoming frustrated – the specialists

Continue reading →

Has the increase in data changed your newsroom?

A case study in online journalism part 3: ebooks (investigating the Olympic torch relay)

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In part one I outlined some of the data journalism processes involved in the Olympic torch relay investigation, in part 2 I explained how verification, SEO and ‘passive aggressive newsgathering’ played a role. This final part looks at how ebooks offered a new opportunity to tell the story in depth – and publish while the story was still topical.

Ebooks – publishing before the event has even finished

After a number of stories from a variety of angles I reached a fork in the road. It felt like we had been looking at this story from every angle. More than one editor, when presented with an update, said that they’d already ‘done the torch story’. I would have done the same.

But I thought of a quote on persistence from Ian Hislop that I’d published on the Help Me Investigate blog previously. “It is saying the same true thing again and again and again and again until the penny drops.”

Although it sometimes felt like we might be boring people with our insistence on continuing to dig we needed, I felt, to say the same thing again. Not the story of ‘Executive carries the torch’ but how that executive and so many others came to carry it, why that mattered, and what the impact was. A longform report. Continue reading →

A case study in online journalism part 2: verification, SEO and collaboration (investigating the Olympic torch relay)

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Having outlined some of the data journalism processes involved in the Olympic torch relay investigation, in part 2 I want to touch on how verification and ‘passive aggressive newsgathering’ played a role.

Verification: who’s who

Data in this story not only provided leads which needed verifying, but also helped verify leads from outside the data. Continue reading →

A case study in online journalism: investigating the Olympic torch relay

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For the last two months I’ve been involved in an investigation which has used almost every technique in the online journalism toolbox. From its beginnings in data journalism, through collaboration, community management and SEO to ‘passive-aggressive’ newsgathering, verification and ebook publishing, it’s been a fascinating case study in such a range of ways I’m going to struggle to get them all down.

But I’m going to try. Continue reading →

My first ebook: Scraping For Journalists (and programming too)

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Next week I will start publishing my first ebook: Scraping for Journalists.

Although I’ve written about scraping before on the blog, this book is designed to take the reader step by step through a series of tasks (a chapter each) which build a gradual understanding of the principles and techniques for tackling scraping problems. Everything has a direct application for journalism, and each principle is related to their application in scraping for newsgathering.

For example: the first scraper requires no programming knowledge, and is working within 5 minutes of reading.

I’m using Leanpub for this ebook, because it allows you to publish in installments and update the book for users – which suits a book like this perfectly, as I’ll be publishing chapters week by week, Codecademy-style.

If you want to be alerted when the book is ready register on the book’s Leanpub page.

Let’s explode the myth that data journalism is ‘resource intensive’

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Is data journalism ‘time consuming’ or ‘resource intensive’? The excuse – and I think it is an excuse – seems to come up at an increasing number of events whenever data journalism is discussed. “It’s OK for the New York Times/Guardian/BBC,” goes the argument. “But how can our small team justify the resources – especially in a time of cutbacks?”

The idea that data journalism inherently requires extra resources is flawed – but understandable. Spectacular interactives, large scale datasets and investigative projects are the headliners of data journalism’s recent history. We have oohed and aahed over what has been achieved by programmer-journalists and data sleuths…

But that’s not all there is.

Continue reading →